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I'm an Admin, helping the team get the forum up and running. I'm a big gamer, and I especially enjoy pen and paper roleplaying. My passions include game design and programing, specifically web games, and writing roleplaying content. I'm relatively new to visual novels, but my growing collection of Fighting Fantasy novels and the hours I spent studying MUDs can attest to my love for adventure gaming... so I'm really excited to learn more from all of you.

I'm also studying Japanese, which comes in useful whenever I want to order pizza ... anyone else studying 日本語？

I was part of the old forums until I saw the status update from the old forums that they moved here. So I moved here as well and here I am. (I hope I'm posting in this Thread/Discussion the right way, this Forum interface is pretty new to me so I apologize if I make mistakes with it.)

For some information about me, I've been watching Anime for 10+ years now and it is my favorite hobby along with Video Games. Because of Anime, I also found a love for Manga as well as Visual Novels here. While I've known about Visual Novels for almost as long as I've known Anime, I'd say I've only just begun to discover the wonderful adventures that Visual Novels can bring in the past few years. The 1st VN I bought from JAST was Yumina the Ethereal since it looked very fun with it's hybrid VN + RPG system and unique battle system and it was a fun VN. From there I've bought several other VNs from JAST and other places that have been localized into English.

I really enjoy JRPG games and 4x Strategy games in particular

Because of my love of Anime and VNs, I've also begun studying Japanese. I've been studying it for almost a year now. Though I would not say I'm fluent in it yet. Though I understand a fair amount of words and can read/write Hiragana and Katakana along with a little Kanji.

I also graduated from College recently and while I'm still not sure what I want to do. I hope to try many various things.

What I hope to do here is discuss the Visual Novels I enjoy with others who also enjoy them. Along with get news about JAST's latest localization projects along with news about Visual Novels overall and ones that are highly recommended by people who really understand VNs well.

I've been following JAST USA and posting in their forums since 2003 or so. JAST USA's focus on gameplay eroge, their relationship with Overflow, and my interactions with them over the years have cemented them as my favorite English eroge publisher. Not to mention I have a affiliate relationship with them that has worked out pretty nicely. I was one of the most active members on the previous forums so becoming a moderator here was a natural next step.

My background in visual novels is very similar to Aurora's, interestingly enough. I was first exposed to visual novels the same way (through anime), and started playing them at about the same time with the exact same game (Yumina the Ethereal in 2013). I followed that up shortly afterward with Katawa Shoujo and found myself completely hooked. I don't have a preference between visual novels with or without heavy gameplay elements. I love a good JRPG or strategy style game, but I also appreciate the ability to quickly breeze through and emotionally connect with more traditional "story in still images" titles. I do tend to strongly prefer story-driven titles to nukige, but I can occasionally get into the latter if they're emotionally intense or have a little dark edge. I play English-translated visual novels exclusively -- I fear I don't have enough drive to learn Japanese just so I can read the imported stuff, much less practice the language often enough so it won't leak out my ears like so many others have done before.

As often happens with me, whenever I get very interested in a subject, that soon turns into an exhaustive project of learning everything I can about its history. If you're interested in the history of visual novels, I think you'll find the "Archives" section of JAST Discuss a virtual treasure trove that reaches all the way back to about 2002 and covers all manner of interesting discussions and debates about the visual novel genre over the years. (Seeing as how JAST USA single-handedly started the English-language visual novel industry back in 1996, that's a pretty comprehensive archive -- check out www.jastusa.com on Archive.org's "Way Back Machine" for the small early time period not covered by the archive.) My interest in visual novel history also extends to playing the older games, and you'll frequently find me playing ancient games like Nocturnal Illusion or Runaway City in between the newer stuff.

Of course, useful as it is for learning about the past, this forum is ultimately all about the present and future! I look forward to discussing the good, the bad, and the delightfully odd elements of JAST's newer visual novel releases with you here, and well as getting stoked and speculating about upcoming titles. I'm also a dedicated creative writer, so I might throw a curveball topic out once in a while, but I promise to not get too off-topic. Later!

My interest in Visual novels was accidental as I stumbled upon Princess Evangile by pure coincidence and fell in love with the story and art of it. I soon started to look for more from Moonstone and found Imouto Paradise (which still remains as one of my favorites). I was amazed to find such a large selection of vns at Mangagamer which I found myself attracted to more of the romance and school setting. However my interest was short lived as I lost my pc and was unable to find interesting visual novels on mobile, although If My Heart Had Wings was intriguing but the 3 wings per day was a turn off and I didn't feel like buying it whole on a cheap android.

Recently I bought a new laptop which allowed me to continue enjoying visual novels. I found myself once again downloading Imouto Paradise, Princess Evangile, Ef Fairy tale of two, and Da capo 1,Kotori Love Ex P, 2. What led to me finding out about JAST was a few of my favorites coming from them and had often seen people talking about School Days HQ and decided to give it a go. School Days was pretty good to me anyways and so I decided to buy Shiny Days. Currently I have 80% of Shiny Days completed and still amazed at all the extra scenes you can find if you just mess around with the dialogue. Im looking forward to the upcoming titles and quite sure I wont be disappointed. I hope to see you all around!

I have been around for ... even longer than sanahtlig. I believe around the summer of 2001 is when I converted into a paying customer and a regular on these boards. (Well, close enough. They were the Peach Princess boards, back when JAST had folded and Peter decided he needed a new brand, and before he decided Jast USA has more name recognition.) The first b-game I ever paid for was Snow Drop (which I liked at the time, and haven't touched in a long time).

I've been an admirer of everything anime for coming on to 2 decades and have been into VNs for over a decade and a half. It all started when I started getting into gaming when I was about 8 or 9, solely RPGs until I got a little older, and when I was about 14 that was when I started getting into VNs when I had purchased the Bible Black bundle that came with the VN and that was when I got hooked and that was also when I was first introduced to Jast and it has been uphill every since.

I was a member of the original jastUSA forums until it was shut down and they moved to another system which I didn't bother with since I thought that my old forum details had been wiped and I wasn't interested in creating another account, which was until the 'community' was being mentioned and I decided to venture back in and to my surprise (because I was going to create a new account and wondered why my usual username (or at least one I use through the forumsphere) was already taken) my original forum account had been moved to this system.

My VN collecting has pretty much ground to a halt (I was going to purchase the sonicomi LE, but after the place I ordered from falsely declared that the publisher had increased the price even though it hadn't been increased it ended up being scrapped) even though there's a few games I need to get, but most of my funds have been allocated to anime and manga for the time being (and there's likely to be more price gouging after that brexit crap).

I've also started on this youtube thing, but even I know that most of this stuff couldn't go there (and I don't even have the equipment to record what I could).

Hi ho!
I already kind talk about this in the my first post.... but I'll post here as well.

"I use to be hugely into Visual Novels and have not played one for about 10 years.
Then I played Muv-Luv and forgot HOW much fun Visual Novels are.
So then I came back to my old sites I use to go too JAST usa and J-LIST"

So~
I'm very out to date with the VN world as today.
but I hope to keep a closer eye on it again.
I run a youtube channel called "N-Game Arts"
I mostly do import unboxings, Let's talk gaming, Game Collection and GMVs... but now I would like to add VN into my mix of videos.
if you like to check it out go here (if my link is violating any rules, please let me know and I'll remove)

I'm not asking for subs or anything... I run my channel to help people nothing more.
and is why I like to do more VN now to help and bring more awareness to Visual Novels.

Greetings from a LONG inactive member. After looking around this new board, it's good to see that Nargrakhan and Nandemonai are still around. Kind of sad to see how little discussion there seems to be though.

@Kimuzukashii MEIJI said:
Greetings from a LONG inactive member. After looking around this new board, it's good to see that Nargrakhan and Nandemonai are still around. Kind of sad to see how little discussion there seems to be though.

I... vaguely remember you. I used to go by the screenname "Dark_Shiki". I changed the name to consolidate my identities after I began focusing on my eroge blog.

The board is a sad shadow of the community that used to exist. But that was more than ten years ago (as I recall, it soured and never recovered after G-Collections put DRM on their products. Back when G-Collections was a seperate entity. Yeah.)

But even by more recent standards, it's been real quiet. Rebooting it twice in close proximity might have backfired.

Well, we certainly appreciate the "old guard". It's you who'll nurture the new guys like me and help to make this an even better place than it was before. I've seen it again and again, when the members of a community make an effort, the community grows and prospers. Your experience is a huge resource to the rest of us.

We've also tried our best to create a forum that's better than the old one and easier to use. @Nicholas and @Tim were instrumental in this—they really wanted to ensure a great user experience. My goal, too, is to make this an awesome forum for an awesome community.

@Nandemonai and @Kimuzukashii MEIJI : At the risk of taking the introduction board in a weird direction, the lower traffic is more a reflection of changes in Internet trends than anything else. Forums were the way people did most of their person-to-person and person-to-company Internet interactions back in 2005, and the great bulk of that work has been taken over by social media (especially Facebook and Twitter) in the intervening years. No matter what anyone here does, this forum will never be quite as happenin' a place as it was in the early 2000s again just because people's Internet consumption patterns have changed.

With that said, I think there's still several things that a forum can do that social media is poorly-engineered for, especially in the realm of detailed discussion. The sheer number of users you get with Facebook and the way it ranks comments by likes makes it really difficult to have a coherent discussion about much of anything on a company FB page. Its non-anonymity also makes it a weird place to discuss eroge--grandma and your uncle Steve may start wondering what this "nukige" you keep liking is all about. So, I think the board may be a bit quieter, but that doesn't mean it can't still be a great source of information and place for us to talk about our mutual hobby.

I would actually be interested in talking about ways to boost traffic to the forum, but if we do, let's start a separate discussion in the "Your Suggestions To Us" section so as not to hijack the introduction feed. Regardless, always good to see more familiar faces here!

@jacksprat1 said:
I would actually be interested in talking about ways to boost traffic to the forum, but if we do, let's start a separate discussion in the "Your Suggestions To Us" section so as not to hijack the introduction feed. Regardless, always good to see more familiar faces here!

@Gobbo said:
Well, we certainly appreciate the "old guard". It's you who'll nurture the new guys like me and help to make this an even better place than it was before. I've seen it again and again, when the members of a community make an effort, the community grows and prospers. Your experience is a huge resource to the rest of us.

Well, now that I am roaming this section of the internet again, I'll do what I can to to get more regular discussion happening here.

@sanahtlig said:
I... vaguely remember you. I used to go by the screenname "Dark_Shiki". I changed the name to consolidate my identities after I began focusing on my eroge blog.

Yes, I remember that name. Good to see that at least one more person I know is still around.

According to the progresslog that is indeed the name of the game. It apparently finished translation in April; seems like it's behind Nympho Sensei Ryoko (by the same maker) which ought to be coming out Real Soon Now (TM).

I'm honestly surprised you found it. It seems to be quite hidden away, like it's more of an afterthought than anything else really. Doesn't help that the other guys killed there forum too. Talking with people about vn's on the forums was one of the things that helped keep my interest up. It's been a couple years since I even played a vn, and I couldn't even be bothered finishing it. Too bad.